Rainbow Cake

Okay! 

Kristine has always been the one to make all the creative birthday cakes, and they always turn out marvellous! But I was excited when I saw a rainbow cake recipe (on what else... pinterest), at this website: 

http://www.omnomicon.com/rainbowcake . She even gives the recipe to be able to do it for diet cake which seems great, but not for a 2 year olds birthday. Anyways, Kristine said I could to try and make Tessa's birthday cake this year. I was pretty excited about it, but was quick to learn how difficult it was... Both doing the actual cake, and being creative enough to live up to Kristine's previous standard. Yikes. 

So this is what I did.

I was able to find neon food colouring! It made the cake so bright and fun!

I used vanilla cake mix out of a box, and just added food colouring. easy!

I then split each colour into 2, and took turns putting them into the cake pans. Making it opposite so when you put the cakes on top of each other, it actually rainbows. 

This picture looks so cool I think. I love the way the rainbow looks! sooo pretty. 

The dishes were not as fun

This picture makes me laugh, because that cake does not look delicious. Oh the joy of icing and being able to hide it. 

So at our summer cabin in BC we have a sand hill. Tessa just loves it there and could spend all day at it. So I built the sandhill out of rice crispies. Haha. you can't see it, but Geoffs contribution was adding a blueberry to look like a beach ball. Haha. Kristine said I should make a baby (because Tessa loves babies), until she realized we would then have to eat the baby... bad idea... haha.

Ps, I do not understand how to do icing. I always fail at it. I was lucky that my design was water, and it was okay to have it dripping all over the place. 

It was so fun when Kristine cut into it. All the kids went "wwooooowwww". haha. Exactly the reaction i wanted. 

The end product! The only mistake I made (okay, let's be serious... i made way more than one mistake...), is that when i put in the dye, it was put in the cake pan as it should have been if the cake was round. for a rectangle cake i should have had the colours in a line in the middle of the pan to make it more like a rainbow so all the colours could be seen in each piece. Oh well. 

So that was my attempt at another pinterest craft! And this one was easy, everyone should try it!

Family Photos

My family is doing family photos this August long weekend. We have only recently made the decision on colours, and have been sent out to find navy shirts. It has proven to be a little difficult since long sleeves is a necessity. This is the email I sent out to the fam one evening:






Okay! We were able to find some outfits for the picture! Super cheap, and pretty nice looking too!
The only problem is we don't really know if it is what you want, so we are sending out pictures.

#1 We don't own any other navy shirts for Geoff, but that would be okay because we thought he could just wear it with nothing else underneath. The only thing wrong with this one is that it is a little snug.

#2 For Geoff this is probably the winner! And then we don't have to worry about finding him jeans either!! He will have a whole navy outfit, and it actually fits him rather well.

And then for me. We really liked this one. The only thing is that it was rather expensive, so we wouldn't be able to buy anything to wear underneath. But i figure that would be okay since then Geoff and i would match a little more if he chose #1 with our skin colour.  ...Becasue skin colour is one of the options right?

Just let us know if you need to know where we got these fabulous outfits if you would like to go and buy one for yourself!

Crayon Art

So, have we all seen those fun melted crayon pictures on the internet? I have, and I love them! So I got this fantastic idea to try to make some for myself! 

These are some of the pictures of my little craft! I first made some for my Smyth babies. I want to make some for my Stone babies, but I have not yet figured out how they will take them to Turks and Caicos...

 So these are the 3 together. I took pictures off the internet and coloured them on the canvas with a Sharpie marker.

 This one is for my little Tessa

 This one is for Tayla

 And this one is for Tyson

 I then hot glue gunned all the crayons onto the canvas. Tayla's was the first one I did, and I thought it would be cute to have 3 bunches of crayons all mixed together.

Tyson's is supposed to look like the bike is riding in the rain, so I had no rhyme or reason and just glued random blues with some random colours mixed in there.

 But this is the canvas that I copied from online. The colours are organized more into a rainbow.

This was the end results of my crayon art! Again, Tayla's was my first one, so there were a couple things I learned from it. For example, not to use the blow dryer on high. That was a silly mistake... The crayons melted way to fast that way, and I couldn't keep up. But I do still love this one with all those colours.

Doesn't it look like he is riding in the rain? Haha.

 Tessa's. It was the last one I did, and has been nominated as many people's favourite. 

The three of them together. So cute I think.

Now I just need to finish the one that I have ready for my own home. I'm pretty excited about them, and that turned out so well. 

...take that pinterest...

Optometry

So I have decided... Going to further schooling past an undergrad, is totally overrated. Well... I guess I should wait until after doing it to see if I still agree... BUT as for now, it feels like way more stress than needed.
We have first started the process by applying to take the Optometry Admissions Test (OAT). Yes, you have to apply to take the test. Not only that, but it cost us $220US just to take the thing. Not horrible, people pay that to take tests all the time. But then we were looking into taking a prep class for it, and could only find an online thing through KAPLAN. Guess how much that was? $1400. Yes, to take a prep class. Is it worth it? We haven't decided yet...
Not only that, but we have been told that most people don't get accepted their first year of applying to schools, so there is more money that we have to waste just applying to a bunch of schools, twice maybe. And, then we will have to fly to the schools in order to do the interviews with the schools. Bah. All while being starving students.
So much stress...
Is it worth all of this to become an optometrist? Who knows people... who knows...


...some days you just need to complain...

Smith Photo Shoot

My girl Kari did a fun photo shoot for Geoff's and I one day. It was a fabulous time, and turned out some awesome pictures! 

Her blog is karijeannephotography.blogspot.ca if you want to go check things out.

I could only post my few favorite, but I loved them all! It was so hard to choose... 

Just love them!

Thank you Kari!

Oops

Soooo...

I feel sooo ridiculous...

BUT, I mean... I thought conference would be the first weekend of April, like it always is. And didn't even THINK to look at what weekend it actually was! I planned our fun weekend for the April 6th weekend... And conference is on March 31st/April 1st! Oh snap.

That is quite a mistake!! And I was rather sad about it. But I have had a couple days to let it soak in, and decide if we wanted to try and change our hotel to the real weekend, and have Geoff skip a class or two of school. But we decided to just leave it the way it is.

So now Geoff and I are going to Salt Lake for no real reason. Haha.

Family Vacation

So I am pretty excited. I have started planning our baby family vacation. Just me and Geoffs.

We are driving down to Salt Lake for Conference!! Sure, it doesn't seem like a very good vacation to most people... especially those that go all the time... but I have never been to Conference with my Geoffs! And we rarely go anywhere but Calgary and BC for vacations, so this is a big deal!! I started planning it months ago. Haha. Which is something that Geoff has been trying to get used too. The way that I have to plan my vacations so early... I just get SO EXCITED.

So we have already booked our dungy little 2 star hotel, only 3 blocks from Temple Square. Nadia and I stayed there a couple years ago and they were sufficient. They had bagels and yogurt for breakfast, and a bed without bed bugs. So obviously i would book it again. Haha.


And this is a secret for Geoff... So noone tell him... But he never checks our cares about our blog anyways, so I feel that I can mention this. We got tickets for a Utah Jazz game!! They were only $12 or something like that... and are only 3 rows from the top. But it will still be epic.






We have planned a day or so at my favorite outlets in the world: Tanger Outlets.







Anywhere that has a Fossil Outlet is a winner for me.

Something on my bucket list is to go to the Festival of Colours. One day I will go. Unfortunately it is the week before conference in Spanish Forks, and the week after Conference in Salt Lake. One day though... one day.

http://utahkrishnas.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=100&Itemid=190

And then of course, we are excited to do a session at the Temple. It is a beautiful temple!! And it will be nice to be there with my loves.

So now I need your help. Is there anything that you would recommend for us to do while we are in Salt Lake? I have been trying to google stuff to do... but word of mouth is always the best way to vacation.